A day off well spent

Monday was rough. I almost didn't blog. I spent a fair portion of my morning in the bathroom wondering why I left my laptop in the bike room. I made it to work, but I wore underwear and carried a plastic bag in my Bagaboo all day. You do the science on that one.

Yesterday was Fajita's birthday, and I was off work. I planned on taking it easy and sleeping in since I've been worn out and have only taken one day off the bike in over three weeks (the day I drove 8.5 hours home from PA).

I awoke at 6:00AM with my deaf dog Maggie staring at me. She only does this if she has a reason, so I got out of bed early to let her out. I could not go back to sleep after that. I failed at sleeping in.

I started with the many tasks at hand. Monday night I had already started the installation of the surprise that I mentioned receiving on Saturday.

Of course I had already taken it out of the box for visual inspection purposes days ago.

My Trans-Sylvania Epic stabbing weapon is put to use every chance I get. Stabby would be proud.



I'll get into the contents of the box later, but I can say that after I installed them Monday night I was not happy. It was my problem, not the brakes. I do not like new, different, or effort.

So Tuesday morning's projects went thusly and slowly into the day.

Re-taped my Stan's Arch/Indsutry Nine rear wheel. Apparently riding almost one mile with a loose, flat tire is not very kind to a Stan's tape job. It was peeled and pushed all over the place. Meh.

Patched a torn Rampage and an IKON. This is a job that requires patience and requires a thorough process, a couple things I suck at. Since I just got asked via facebook how to do it, here goes (skip it if you don't care or just throw ripped tires away because you are independently wealthy):

Find the hole. Rub the latex off with your finger, an area big enough for your patch plus some. Alcohol wipe the spot off. Let it dry. Schmear on some patch glue (regular bike patch/large size... I use the big patch from a Genuine Innovations patch kit). Let it dry. Apply patch. Clamp it in a vice for a while (hours, overnight, a week). Carefully remove the thin, clear plastic WITHOUT PEELING (bend the patch and it will crack). Mount, ride, enjoy.

Swapped the Superbeast from a 32X20 to a 38X23. Why?

Increased chain wrap while achieving nearly the same ratio (1.6 VS 1.65), and more clearance, Clarence:

Lotsa noise coming from here soon to be much less noise.

Once the family was awake I did have things to do. Take Fajita on a ride to the playground, inspect a pond for living beings, and create a horse cake.

It was a Scarface themed birthday party. Made with real, grass fed horse meat.

Not riding all day (aside from said trip to the playground and pond) was hard. Being that yesterday was the coolest day Charlotte has seen in weeks, combined with the fact that I had a new toy to play with, I ended up riding anyways.

My Hayes installation was not thorough in any manner, and the trimming of the lines and bleeding will be done tonight.

I rode around in public looking like this:

This is almost as bad as when I rode this:

Not nearly as bad as Stabby who rode this zip tied spaghetti horror:

or Teddy Pender (formerly known as Bubba Cohen) who rode this over the top and around the back routing:

Tomorrow, we (I) talk about brakes, what's new, and why.